


"Will you look at this?"

by AuthorinExile



Series: Fictober 2020 [9]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Backstory, Explaining Why Nora is Actually Competent, Explanations, F/M, Gen, Nora's Whole Family is Either Dead or Missing, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Canon, Sanctuary Hills (Fallout 4), She's Allowed to be a Little Melodramatic, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Nick Valentine/Nora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29857470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorinExile/pseuds/AuthorinExile
Summary: Nick Valentine has offered, against his better judgment, to help Nora build a house. He's not good at it, but she opens up to him a little more. He counts it as a win.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor & Nick Valentine, Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Nate/Female Sole Survivor, Nate/Nora (Fallout), Nate/Sole Survivor (Fallout), Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine
Series: Fictober 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147928
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	"Will you look at this?"

Nora is a woman full of contradictions. 

She’s surprisingly scrappy for someone who lived a fairly relaxed life in the pre-War world, but she’s also achingly gentle for someone living in the wastelands of the Commonwealth. She’s tough and practical and makes difficult decisions quickly. She’s also kind and sweet and agonizes over her interactions with others. Nick’s seen her shoot men in the face for looking at her funny. Nick’s seen her take a lost child by the hand and lead him home with a soft smile. He’s watched her take apart robots with the same technical precision she uses to provide settlements with electricity.

Nora is a more complicated person than Nick Valentine had imagined could exist in the Commonwealth, and he is fascinated by her.

Fascinated enough, apparently, that he volunteered to help her today. Usually, he just tags along for the shooting and case-solving that Nora seems to delight in, so he’s not sure why he even volunteered for this. He’s also not sure why Nora agreed, but well, she did, and he’s here now.

If only he had building skills worth a damn.

“Alright, take it back--Whoa! Careful, not that far back.”

Nick pauses and flexes his hands on the section of metal sheeting he’s currently carrying. It’s supposed to be a wall--would probably be a wall already if someone else was helping--but right now, it’s just a burden.

“Gotta say, doll,” he drones, “I’m not sure why we’re doing this.”

“I promised to build a town hall,” Nora reminds him gently, “and you volunteered to help.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” he huffs, finally managing to push the sheet of metal up against the support columns where Nora needs it.

“Oh, that’s perfect, Nick. Just hold that there, would you?” As she grabs her welding gun and pulls her goggles into place, she adds, “I’m not sure what you mean, Nick. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, the fact that people need a place to meet up and discuss stuff is pretty much all the reason I have.”

“No, not-- That’s all well and good, Nora. I guess I just meant, I’m not sure why you’re still humoring me when I’m obviously not good at this sort of thing.”

Obviously amused, Nora responds, “Oh, Nick, even you couldn’t fuck up holding a wall.”

“Give it a few minutes, doll.”

Nora falls silent for the next several minutes as she focuses on welding said wall to the metal beams attaching it to the rest of the structure. When she finishes, she shuts off the welding gun with a  _ click _ and steps back to admire her work, holding her fingers up as a frame to judge it in comparison to the other work. Nick, still standing beside the wall, turns away and tries not to think about how cute her thinking face is.

Nora picks up the conversation as if she had never dropped it.

“Don’t feel too bad, Nick. You’re not as awful at it as you think. Besides, anything can be learned with enough practice.”

“Is that how you learned? You just...kept doing it wrong until you did it right?”

“Ha. Hardly.”

Nick turns back to Nora to see that her face has taken on that peculiar mix of sorrow and nostalgia that always accompanies her pre-War memories.

“No, I actually learned most of my building stuff from my family. Mom was in construction, kinda. She did a lot of drafting plans and designs and such, but never for anything on a huge scale. Mostly remodeling shops and homes, with the occasional small project for farms and things like that. And, of course, Dad was an engineer with a… Let’s call it an ‘innovative spirit,’ shall we?”

“Because it sounds better than a ‘mad scientist streak,’ I guess,” Nick interjects playfully.

“Exactly,” Nora laughs. “You get it!”

Nick hesitates to keep probing, but he’s curious, and he might as well ask now while she’s already talking about it, right? That’s gotta be better than bringing it up again later. At least, he desperately hopes it’s better that way.

“And the other stuff?”

Nora looks at him oddly for a moment before understanding dawns on her face. A sad smile follows shortly after, and her gaze floats away from his as she remembers.

“Ah,” she says softly, “all the shooting and farming and survival stuff. Heh. I guess it is pretty silly to think about a lawyer doing all the stuff I’ve been doing, isn’t it? It hadn’t even occurred to me, really. So much of it is just...muscle-memory, I think.”

The sad nostalgia on her face doesn’t disappear, but it shifts enough to make room for the little smile that forms beside it. With a gesture, Nora begins walking away towards the center of town, and Nick follows, still listening attentively as she begins to speak again.

“A lot of that I owe to Nate, honestly. He was always such an outdoorsman. He loved to camp and hunt and go on these long,  _ long _ hiking trips. Oh, god, it was  _ awful _ .”

She ends with a little laugh, and Nick finds himself smiling just at the sound.

“Anyway. When we first started dating, he kept asking me to do that sort of stuff with him, and I was just too enthralled with him to tell him I was more of an inside girl. I mean, honestly, here’s a man who could survive in any environment you dropped him into, and he’s interested in  _ me _ , a woman who goes inside to read comics and play Atomic Command at the first sign of temperatures above eighty? It would’ve seemed completely untenable if we didn’t have the same taste in literature and movies and radio shows. Honestly, besides the difference in hobbies, we were damn near perfectly compatible, and he was painfully handsome to boot. So. Yeah, no way in hell I was gonna fuck that up, thanks.

“So I just…didn’t say anything. I mean, I could’ve said something, and I have no doubt that Nate would’ve given up on outdoorsy dates entirely, but… I didn’t want that either, if that makes sense. He was just  _ so _ happy to finally have someone he could do this stuff with, and he seemed to genuinely enjoy teaching me, so I just sorta...adopted his survivalism by proxy, I guess.”

Nora pauses, reminiscing quietly for several minutes. Her smile falls away, as though the memories have become less happy, and she softly sighs.

“After he started touring, Nate got… It wasn’t paranoia, exactly. He was just...worried. All the time, he was worried. He saw some truly horrific things overseas, and he was so afraid that it would reach me somehow. At first, he was afraid that the war would come here directly. Then he thought that it  _ had _ gotten here already, in a way, devastating the morale and changing the economy of the country the way it did. And when his nightmares started--”

Nora cuts herself off abruptly, chewing at her lip and staring into the distance. She doesn’t finish the thought, but Nick can read between the lines well enough to figure out what she’s thinking. The war had been hard on everyone involved, but the soldiers had dealt with the worst of it. 

Nick can understand Nate’s fear. The PTSD must have been bad enough on its own, but who knows what Nate had to do just to survive? It couldn’t have been easy to come home and try to move on to normalcy. It couldn’t have been easy to wonder, day in and day out, if Nate himself would somehow be a danger to Nora.

Nick abruptly realizes that they’ve stopped walking. Nora is staring straight ahead, and following her gaze, Nick sees they’ve stopped in front of what was once, hundreds of years ago, the house Nora shared with her husband and child.

“So he taught me to use a gun,” Nora finishes monotonously. “He taught me to use a lot of guns, just in case. And I kept a garden my entire life, so I know how to grow food. And all the ‘natural charm’ you tease me for is from my lawyer days, of course, and not natural in the slightest.”

She pauses and steadies herself.

“Really, it’s almost funny,” she says in a tone more suited for tears than laughter. “Nate would’ve been the best for the fighting and surviving and… And everything else. But this?”

Still staring at her house, Nora gestures around them. Nick follows the gesture with his eyes and sees what she means.

All around them are people keeping busy. Sturges is tinkering with some new machine. Preston has paused in his patrol to chat cheerfully with the newest resident. Jun and Marcy are gardening side by side, exchanging the briefest of glances and smallest of smiles every few minutes. Some residents are gathered in a small group just off the street, playing cards, while Mama Murphy entertains the handful of children in the settlement with quiet stories and palm readings. There are other people milling about, entertaining themselves or patrolling or gardening or just... _ existing. _ Just existing in this space where they can be happy and free with other people. The sound of their lives makes Sanctuary feel so much fuller than it has in months, and Nick doesn’t even fight off the swell of pride he feels at the sight of the town.

Nora says, “Will you look at this?” Nicks turns back to her and sees that her gaze has joined his in observing the people of Sanctuary. Oh so softly she adds, “That’s what’s so funny. Nate would have found Shaun by now, you know. He would’ve found Shaun, and he would’ve made the bastards who took him pay, and he would’ve already set up a homestead somewhere he could teach Shaun to fish and hunt and do all the things he taught me.

“But he would never have managed this. He would never have managed to bring people together and build communities like these. That part of it always had to be me, Nick. This was always what I was capable of.

“And you know what? I still wish he was the one standing here right now.”

Nick doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t think there’s anything he  _ could _ say to that.

But he tries anyway.

“Nora--”

“Ya know, Nick,” she interrupts, “I think I’m done for the day. We can pick up tomorrow, alright?”

Nick nods mutely. Nora smiles sadly and says, “I think I’ll be going back to the Red Rocket tonight.”

“A-Alright,” Nick mutters, “Do you want me--”

“No, that’s alright. I… I’d like to be alone for a bit.”

Nick just nods in response to her apologetic smile and watches her make her way down the road and out of Sanctuary. She stops only once at the bridge to say something to Codsworth, who bobs his head briefly. She pats his side and waves over her shoulder, and then she’s gone, already halfway to the not-quite settlement she’s been using as a personal base.

_ Close enough that I can be on-site if needed _ , she’d told him once.  _ Far enough that I don’t have to wake up in the corpse of my old life every day. _

Nick looks up at Nora’s old house and thinks.

For the first time, he thinks he understands.

**Author's Note:**

> Still mad I couldn't romance the suave robot tbh.


End file.
